


Idiot's Array

by Kaggath



Series: Playing Against the Dealer [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, say hello to the space peach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 10:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17042192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaggath/pseuds/Kaggath
Summary: Kati'po, a former entertainment servant, has found herself in an unlikely alliance with formidable pirate Andronikos Revel.





	Idiot's Array

Kati’po’s life started on a mistranslation. And now, it seemed, it would end on one too.

“Soothe me, my little night singer,” she heard from under the cold, red sand. Red, deep in mineral deposits, or perhaps blood. She could believe enough blood had been spilled on Korriban to dye the whole planet.

“Night Stinger, huh?” the other acolytes jeered above her. Kati’po’s name made her sound more fierce than she was. It put a target on her head, a prize to the victor of whoever felled the fearsome alien with a warrior’s name.

As she sang for her former master by the steaming baths and opulent furniture, Kati’po folded neatly beside her like petals of a flower that never bloomed. On the red sand of Korriban, she did not fold.

She crumpled.

A noise, far away but drawing near. The other acolytes ran. Killing another acolyte was forbidden. If they got caught. Rather than stay and risk the reprimand—for a reprimand from a Sith was a fearsome thing—they fled, leaving Kati’po bleeding into the sand, half frozen, unable to move from cold and shock and fear.

The horizon shifted, and the sanguine horror yielded into yellow, warm hills. Her head bobbed, and she tried to make sense of it. No…this wasn’t Korriban…this was Tatooine. She remembered now. A warm planet, not the cold desert she’d escaped. 

Well, for a time.

She drove the speeder through a deceptively cold cave, long and dark, several degrees cooler than the sweltering twin suns. Kati’po felt herself slipping under from the sudden change in temperature and tried to turn on the heater, but she was stopped by…

Andronikos.

Fully alert now, she grabbed for her lightsaber. All across Tatooine she’d been told he was unhinged. A monster, without morals or empathy. A cold blooded killer. But she needed him to get one of Zash’s sense-forsaken artifacts.

Kati’po kept a very, very close eye on the pirate in their short time together. He was every bit as terrifying as she’d been led to believe. Which put him at only slightly less terrifying than the actual monster she had pulled from under those terrible red sands. 

Temporarily unconscious—lacking the acclimation others even in her species had due to her posh captivity at the hands of a soft master—she lost her connection to her surroundings. Usually painfully hyperaware of what was around her, she felt a horrific un-seeing she was not used to. Her connection to the Force, or perhaps her lifetime of dancing, or both feeding into each other, had meant she knew exactly where she and everything around her was at all times. 

Kati’po’s teeth began to chatter as she stretched out, searching for the pirate Andronikos Revel. He was rummaging through the speeder. Her speeder! To be sitting in the sand he had to pull her from the vehicle and carry her to where she now sat. Instead of making off with it, though, he returned with supplies and rations. 

“May I?” he drawled sarcastically, pointing a scanner at her. He was still sour about the womp rat incident, apparently. 

“I’m fine…” Kati’po said. She tried to stand, rustling sand out of her robes in one of many exercises in futility. “The temperature change just got to me is all.”

His tattoo twitched like a claw ready to swipe as he cocked an eyebrow. His lips pulled to the side in an unamused almost sneer. Those eyes that had seen so much death and still sparkled studied her, but he didn’t reach for his blaster. Better than Kati’po expected, she supposed. 

“Look,” he said, jerking his head to the side. “There’s one of your special rocks you’re so interested in.” 

Oh, yeah. Definitely sour about the womp rat incident.

She actually did need those crystals, though. On top of everything else from the Force to the history of the Sith, she had to learn how to create things to channel or augment her own power. That meant gathering every viable sample she could find. Though she had her back turned to the pirate as she gathered her samples, Kati’po kept a watchful unseen eye on him through the Force. 

He seemed to be setting up camp?

“Are we not going to keep going?” she asked, arranging the crystals neatly in her bag. 

“Those suns are going to set faster than you think, and believe it or not there’s worse things out here than womp rats. If you’re going to be down and out from a little cold and a little dark, I’m not sticking my neck out without cover for the raiders to come get in my way.” 

“I said I’m fine! Really! I want this to be over just as fast as you do.”

His eyes flashed, bitterness and anger pulling the muscles around them tight. 

“You sure about that?” he said in a deceptively measured tone. His arms were crossed, his deep voice loaded like a blaster. Those eyes looked into her and she feared he could see straight through her. She was no Sith. She got by on bluffs, and the fear the galaxy already had in more prominent, powerful Sith. These were just the cards she was dealt.

Drawing herself up, she tried on another face. Pulling the muscles as an actress does, she made herself a mirror of Harkun. He wore disgust and contempt like it belonged there. It was a very Sith face.

“I’m getting that artifact. Your payment for leading me to it is the revenge you seek, but if you get in my way, I’m more than capable of handling this desert myself. I am Sith, I have a Dashade. Cross me, and you’ll never get to Wilkes.”

“Tch. Crazy Sith,” Andronikos said with a dismissive wave. He wasn’t scared, but he wasn’t deciding he didn’t need her as she claimed she didn’t need him. 

Folding once again like a flower bud, Kati’po nestled into the Force while Andronikos set up a small camp. She could feel the coming drop in temperature as the desert creatures slithered and skulked to their homes, or prepared to scurry out under the moons of Tatooine. 

“Eat up,” Andronikos said emotionlessly, tossing her a few ration bars. Kati’po grimaced at the bricks of near-food. As an entertainment servant, she was given meals suited to fuel performance. One could not be a shining star for guests to ogle at if one was emaciated. Never excess, no sweets, but Kati’po also did not have to know true hunger. 

She was almost willing to if it meant she didn’t have to eat these things. The dry bars stuck to her teeth and scraped her throat as she swallowed. They hurt her stomach and made her wonder what they were actually made of. Trying not to inspect the bar too closely, Kati’po decided she didn’t want to know.

Sitting on a rock, not facing her but not exposing his back either, Andronikos glared at the horizon. Pointing a finger out like a blaster, he jerked it back, defeating his invisible foe.

“You’re thinking about Wilkes,” Kati’po murmured. Andronikos didn’t surface from whatever vision played before him, but he rested his elbows on his knees. Brown eyes swimming across the sand, Kati’po could only imagine what triumph he was watching play out.

“I’m thinking about ripping his spine out through his ass and beating him with it.”

What a poet.

“You’d make a great Sith, from the sounds of it,” Kati’po said, gazing out to the empty sands. Yellow sand. Warm, safe yellow sand.

“Not the cards I was dealt, Sith,” Andronikos said as he stood, clapping his hands clean. “Speaking of cards, what say you we pass the time with a little sabacc. Ain’t goin’ anywhere soon and I’m getting antsy.”

“I always lose,” Kati’po said with a sad smile. She always lost, and she always lost with the same hand. Every time. Fate? The Force? Something was giving her a message loud and clear.

“Ah, you don’t have nothin’ good to bet anyway, but if you’re fine with watching me sharpen knives while the suns set have it your way.”

“No, no. We can play, it’ll just get boring rather quick. But. Well, you’ll see.”

Andronikos snorted and rolled his eyes, but he got his cards out anyway, muttering “Crazy Sith,” as he rummaged through his pocket.

“Alright, playing against the dealer,” Andronikos chattered in a voice that suggested he’d said it several times across the galaxy, winning him spoils and plunder suitable for a pirate. He bridged the cards from one hand into the other, a flourish before the shuffle. Was he showing off?

“Twenty three positive, coins,” he rattled along, looking like he felt quite sly. Presenting Kati’po her first card, a taunting smile pulled at his lips, but Kati’po couldn’t see malice in his eyes. Not quite. 

“Gonna take a pretty strong hand, Sith.”

Kati’po took the three of sabers from him.

“Hit,” she said without breaking eye contact. A strong hand? She had no hand. He’d see.

Next came the two of sabers, as it always did.

“Hit.”

This time Kati’po didn’t even look at her card. She could feel it under her finger tips. That mocking smile, reminding her she had no choice, no destiny, no future. Reminding her that she was so small in such a big universe with no true friends, questionable allies, and no support from anyone but herself. A non-autonomous cog in a larger machine.

She presented her hand.

“I’ll be damned…” Andronikos murmured, shocked.

“I told you I always lose.”

“Alright, whoever told you that’s a losing hand? You need to make them drink their teeth, Sith. That’s an Idiot’s Array, and it beats even a pure sabacc.”

Embarrassment blushed deep pink across her already coral tinted cheeks. She hadn’t played much sabacc, but when she learned she was told the Idiot always meant a losing hand, and she had believed it.

Stupid. Naïve.

“Look, if you get hands like that maybe we should take a night out on Nar Shaddaa, add a few commas to our ledger,” Andronikos winked at her. It didn’t help her blush.

They spent the setting suns with Andronikos teaching her the real sabacc and Kati’po drawing Idiot’s Arrays over and over against all odds. The tension that gripped Andronikos every second Kati’po had known him seemed to slowly release itself, and as the moons rose and the temperature dropped, his mood softened.

This was a very unexpected side of the fearsome pirate she’d found in the cantina. 

“I always recommend keeping your cards close to your chest, but I think we both know that’s not what you’re doing.”

It was true. While the steady drop was much easier to handle, soon it would be too cold for that to matter. 

Kati’po tried to settle down into a comfortable sleeping position, but it was difficult with all the sand and rocks. Her bed on Korriban was barely a step up, and she’d had trouble sleeping. Her life before was so soft. She was weak. It was a miracle she’d gotten this far. 

Sure, she had to push her body before, but she wasn’t mistreated. She had no freedom, but she had protection. Now she had neither. Now Kati’po was alone, trying to survive a galaxy she wasn’t prepared for. A galaxy full of conniving and plotting and danger, running errands that could get her killed and being expected to overcome all with the power of the Force she still barely yet understood.

Slapping at the sand, she sat up and propped herself against the rocks that made for over in their small camp. 

“You okay?” Andronikos popped his head into the tent, temporarily abandoning his watch of the silent dunes. Kati’po wrapped her arms around her knees, pressing her forehead into them.

“I can’t sleep.” 

Andronikos let out a grumbling sigh, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I know I said there was nasty stuff out there, but I’m keeping watch. Nothing’s gonna get us, okay?” His delivery was gentler than his words. Andronikos Revel, Kati’po realized, may not have much experience trying to comfort someone, but he was trying. For her.

“That’s…thank you.” Kati’po decided against telling him what really bothered her. He may be playing nice, but he was still a pirate. What was she to him, really? 

“Here,” he said, settling beside her, “We can watch together. I’ve got years of experience, you’ve got the Force, if we team up nothing’s gonna get past us. Deal?” 

“Deal.”

But it wasn’t easy to watch the sand forever. Kati’po’s eyes wandered to Andronikos. To his face, his tattoo, the gentle color of his deeply tanned skin, kissed by nature and a thousand suns she would probably never see. To his full lips that could no longer suppress a sly grin.

“If you wanted company, you could’ve just asked,” he teased. Kati’po elbowed him in the arm, sticking her tongue out like the mature and dignified Sith she was. It seemed to lighten both their moods, though, and they were in dire need of that.

In the silvering light of Tatooine’s moons and the hush of shifting sands, Kati’po finally began to feel her eyelids becoming heavy. She settled like silt into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

 

Golden light gently roused her and as her sight and mind probed outward, Kati’po became aware of three things. Andronikos was still beside her, still asleep. Her head rested against his shoulder, one lekku wrapped gently around his bicep. Her right hand rested on top of his thigh, palm up, but his arms were crossed. 

Her face burned as if she stood under the Tatooine noon, two suns scorching her cheeks.

Three unfortunate truths, two burning suns, and one idiot, starting to have feelings for the menacing pirate Andronikos Revel.


End file.
